Regular readers will know I'm a huge fan of Fog Creek's Joel Spolsky and his blog, Joel on Software. His latest essay is even better than usual, being about Seven steps to remarkable customer service.
His first and most important point is to treat software crashes the way NTSB treats airliner crashes: figure out what happened and try to make sure it never happens again. This means technical support has to be smart and it has to have access to the developers. Of course that's expensive, but for Fog Creek, it pays off in the long run:
When we handle a tech support incident with a well-qualified person here in New York, chances are that's the last time we're ever going to see that particular incident. So with one $50 incident we've eliminated an entire class of problems.
Somehow, the phone companies and the cable companies and the ISPs just don't understand this equation. They outsource their tech support to the cheapest possible provider and end up paying $10 again and again and again fixing the same problem again and again and again instead of fixing it once and for all in the source code. The cheap call centers have no mechanism for getting problems fixed; indeed, they have no incentive to get problems fixed because their income depends on repeat business, and there's nothing they like better than being able to give the same answer to the same question again and again.
There are actually eight steps in the piece, but Joel likes to give you more than you expected.....
